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What Is Good Teaching?

Valentine's Day is a good time to express your appreciation of teachers. It's also a good time to define good teaching and think about unsung heroes. Good teachers change our lives. They inspire us and set us on new paths. Good teachers motivate, engage, challenge, inspire, and sometimes save us from ourselves or from others. Great teachers lift us up. They make us aspire to higher aims.

Good teachers—both tangibly and intangibly—are among the most valuable members of society. Research reports that the difference in a weak teacher and a strong teacher can last a student's lifetime. If you have ever had a good teacher, express your gratefulness on Valentine's Day. One good teacher in my life was Miss Elliott.

A Valentine for Miss Mary Alice Elliott

Truthfully, I've been blessed with many good teachers. On this Valentine's Day I'm sending a Valentine of appreciation to Miss Mary Alice Elliott, my high school history teacher. She gave hard tests. She inspired me by making history come alive. Her classes were sprinkled with art projects, multi-media assignments, story-telling, and anecdotes. Miss Elliott had traveled far beyond my poor, rural North Carolina community and she shared that experience in her classroom. She made me long to travel and see the world. She was the first person I knew who had traveled to India. She studied at Poona University under a Fulbright Scholarship and shared that experience with her students. She introduced me to fine art. I still remember her lectures on the discus thrower and bird's nest soup. (I would later see the British Museum's copy of Myron's lost, Greek, bronze, discus thrower from the fifth century BC. Tasting authentic bird's nest soup is still in my future.)

Miss Elliott Was a Great Teacher

How to evaluate a good teacher, what to pay them, and how to give them more prestige are currently crucial issues in America. I don't know the answer for today's vital question of how to evaluate good teachers, but even in high school, I knew one when I saw one. Miss Elliott's good teaching would influence me as a teacher in elementary school and years later as a teacher at the university and beyond. She still inspires.

Good teaching has a lot to do with rigor, discipline, knowledge of subject matter, creativity, high expectations, preparation, and passion. At best it includes compassion and caring for students. Good teachers motivate and inspire. I learned this from Miss Elliott. Although she retired after 40 years of teaching, she continued to teach me about teaching. Ten years after retirement Miss Elliott was still driving every week to a town 26 miles from her home to volunteer-teach struggling fifth-grade readers. She volunteered in a school with many poor children. To celebrate the successful completion of a book they had read together–usually an illustrated classic that wasn't in the child's home–Miss Elliott purchased the books ahead of time and gave the classic to her tutees after she taught them to read it.

Good Teaching Requires Heart and Soul

Years after Miss Elliott retired, a local kindergarten teacher invited our former high school history teacher to "put on a program" for her kindergarten class on "George Washington." Miss Elliott wrote me a letter about that experience: "I put my heart and soul in this as I did not know a thing about teaching kindergarten," she wrote.

What did she do? She took in two American Revolutionary military uniforms for two little boys to wear during her lesson. I'm sure they will never forget how proud they were to be chosen. She purchased $1 play-money bills displaying Washington's portrait for each child. She gave each child a Washington relief portrait on a real quarter. She told the kindergartners George Washington stories, baked them thumbprint cookies with a cherry in the middle, and gave them smooth river-pebbles to remind them of her telling of Washington crossing the Delaware. Finally she purchased a flag and had them sing "Yankee Doodle" as they marched around the room at the end of the lesson. Laughing about her transition from advanced placement history to kindergarten she told me, "A real teacher can adapt and teach anything."

Leaving Students with Better Life Outcomes

Good teachers leave students with a better life. Miss Elliott did that for me. Are teachers like Miss Elliott born or made? Good teaching can be learned from a good mentor. But maybe some of great teaching is inborn. Some research studies show that great leaders and good entrepreneurs may be influenced by genetic factors. As I strive to be a good teacher, I'm thankful to have teaching in my blood. My great grandfather was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. My grandmother was a teacher. My mother was my first grade teacher when she taught me to read. I had three aunts and three uncles who were teachers. Everyone of them influenced my life in positive ways. Teachers in our lives keep on giving even after they are gone.

So here's a shout out to all of you teachers–past, present, and future: "Happy Valentine's Day, I love you!" And to Miss Mary Alice Elliott–eighty years young–a special Happy Valentine's Day to you!

(Dr. J. Richard Gentry is the author of Raising Confident Readers, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write-From Baby to Age 7. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and find out more information about his work on his website.)

Carol White shared your article about Miss Elliot on FB. I really enjoyed it and was a student of hers as well. She was always very thorough in every detail of US history. I attended East Carolina University and majored in Early Childhood Education. When I got my teaching job with Person County Schools it was because your Mom retired. She was going home several times a day for your Dad and I was told it just got to be too much for her. I started during the 5th week of the 1976-77 school year. I stayed there for my 30 years teaching K and 1st or a combination class. I am in my 7th year of retirement. You conducted a workshop at NE for us on spelling one time. I remember you discussed the different ways to spell carrot and the meanings. I know I taught alot of ABC's and 123's. Getting a student from point A to whatever was always what made me so happy. That is the only part I miss. I hope I touched many lives.

What a pleasure to run across this. Miss Elliott taught me AP US History at PSHS in the late '80s, and remains one of my most memorable and effective teachers, even after undergraduate and graduate school in great programs at outstanding universities. I hope that my daughter has teachers as interesting and rigorous as Miss Elliott always was - her high standards meant that I was always a little terrified of walking into her class without being fully prepared, so I learned a great deal that year. Thanks to her, and to you for the tribute to her.

I too am a product of Person County Schools and of Miss Mary Alice Elliott. It is because of teachers like Miss Elliot that I became a teacher and that my favorite part of teaching 5th grade was acting out moments in history. What a wonderful tribute to a wonderful lady that touched so many lives of Person County students.
Chrystal Clayton
Principal Oak Lane Elementary
Person County Schools

Miss Mary Alice Elliot continues to serve in schools, her church, and her community in many ways. She is a personal friend and a fine lady. She is known far and wide for her famous review of often obscure but interesting books in our local book clubs. Although she spent her career in Person County she has lived in Granville County all her life (I am guessing).

My experience with Miss Elliot was during the 10 years I lived in Oxford, NC I was a member of the Saturday Book Club of which Miss Elliot was also a member. She brought such enthusiasm to the club and when you gave your presentations she listened intently and most times she knew about your book or subject. I remember when I presented a report on a book about young Joseph Kennedy who was in the same squadron as my Father. Joseph Kennedy died during WWII flying a mission for which the pilots drew straws. She listened carefully and then remarked with some historical trivia that I had forgotten to bring up and I was just blown away that she knew this in such detail. She has an amazing thirst for knowledge and is so good at sharing it.

It is a pleasure to have spent time with such a knowledgeable and interesting lady and I miss Mary Alice, The Saturday Book Club and Oxford, NC greatly.

I have also had amazing teachers in my life. My grade one teacher Dr. Beth Rowls Scott taught all the children in her class that they not only had special gifts but they were special gifts. I became a teacher because of her. Somehow, she knew, I mean really 'knew' each child in her care. She supported us, challenged us and ignited a love for learning. I wanted to make a difference like she had. Although I have been teaching for 25 years or so, loving my students and always trying to help them find their gifts I know there is still much more to be done. Dr. Beth Rowls Scott went on the be the first female principal in Surrey BC. She wrote a book titled "Pinche Me: A Long Walk from the Prairies".After she retired she and her husband founded ACCESS - African Canadian Continuing Education Society. Yes, great teachers keep inspiring us long after our year with them is gone. It seems I have a lot to live up to. So here is to all the great teachers and the wonderful students who inspire us.

Miss Elliott was right....it takes "heart and soul" to teach well. On my 6th birthday, my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I promptly said, "I want to be a teacher, just like Mrs. Miller." She was my first grade teacher...and because of her I became a teacher and saved thousands of 'falling readers'... thank you, Mrs. Miller.

This article a wonderful tribute. Thanks for sharing your insights, heart, and soul, Richard! Well done...